akosbalasko/yarle

Yarle - The ultimate converter of Evernote notes to Markdown

Download YARLE, the ULTIMATE CONVERTER OF EVERNOTE notes here:

Get YARLE for Mac	Get YARLE for Windows	Get YARLE for Linux (.rpm)	Get YARLE for Debian (.deb)

Features:

Yarle can convert:

• 📝 Any text
• 📝 All metadata: original creation time, last modification time, tags, GPS location, notebook name, source URL
• 🔗 External links
• 🔗 Internal links among Evernote notes
• 💻 Codeblocks
• 🖼️ Inline Images
• 📎 Attachments
• 📄 Webclips

Works with:

• 📓 single enex file (one notebook exported from Evernote)
• 📚 or a folder of enex files supported (several notebooks exported and placed into the same folder locally)

Highly customizable:

• 🚀 Creates Markdown files matching to user-defined templates, see Templates introduced. See How to use templates with YARLE for details.
• 💡 Metadata support: Puts title, creation time, update time, tags, and latlong source, notebook, link to original html meta-information into md as metadata. (To set them, please set up a custom template)
• 🔨 Updates md files' creation, access, and modification timestamps according to the notes' original create/update/modification time.
• 🔨 Organizes all attachments into a _resources subfolder (to keep the notes' folder as simple as possible).

To where can I import the converted notes?

Any other note taking application which recognizes notes in standard markdown, like NotePlan or Craft, but Yarle supports some others that has specific format requirements too. These are:

Obsidian

LogSeq

Tana (check details and limitations here)

Heptabase

Feedback, Appreciation, Donation:

If you have an idea on how to improve the tool or face any problems, feel free to raise an issue, or even contribute! If you like the product, you can give a star here on github, or you can

Yarle's supporters said:

from Someone

Thanks, this really helped me out of evernote!

from john@thebeard.org

YARLE has just allowed me to transfer several years-worth of Evernote notes to Obsidian painlessly and astonishingly quickly. Your work has made my day. Thank you.

from @opscat

Thanks so much!

Proud to be suggested by:

Instructions

Download the application matching with your Operating system and double-click on it. (On mac, you need to right-click + Run to Open it, because Apple prevents to directly run an application downloaded from Internet)

yarle.5.0.demo.mov

In order to perform conversion into Logseq format, please choose Logseq as Target format in the configuration panel, then choose the type of your notes (Journal Notes or Pages). For Logseq all the other options have already been pre-configured.

Using Yarle via command line

Just open a terminal, specify config options in a config file (options detailed in Configuration) and type the following:

npx -p yarle-evernote-to-md@latest yarle --configFile <path_to_your_file e.g. ./config.json>

Yarle intro and usage videos on Youtube:

How to migrate notes from Evernote to Obsidian (using Yarle)
YARLE: A lifeline to escape from Evernote

Configuration:

To configure Yarle, you must create a config file. By default it looks like this:

{
    "enexSources": [
       "/absolute-path-of-your-enex-dir/test-template.enex"
       ],
    "templateFile": "/absolute-path-of-your-template-dir/sampleTemplate.tmpl",
    "outputDir": "/path-of-your-desired-output-folder",
    "isZettelkastenNeeded": false,
    "useZettelIdAsFilename": false,
    "plainTextNotesOnly": false,
    "skipWebClips": true,
    "useHashTags": true,
    "outputFormat": "StandardMD",
    "taskOutputFormat": "StandardMD",
    "urlEncodeFileNamesAndLinks": false,
    "skipEnexFileNameFromOutputPath": false,
    "monospaceIsCodeBlock": false,
    "keepMDCharactersOfENNotes": false,
    "keepOriginalAmountOfNewlines": false,
    "addExtensionToInternalLinks": true,
    "trimStartingTabs": false,
    "convertPlainHtmlNewlines": false,
    "encryptionPasswords": [],
    "nestedTags": {
      "separatorInEN": "_",
      "replaceSeparatorWith": "/",
      "replaceSpaceWith": "-"
   },
   "replacementCharacterMap": {
      "<": "_",
      ">": "_",
      ":": "_",
      "\"": "_",
      "/": "_",
      "\\": "_", 
      "|": "_",
      "?": "_",
      "*": "_"
    },
   "globalReplacementSettings": [
        {
         "type": "title" ,
         "regex": "X",
         "replace": "<replaced_X>"
         },
        {
         "type": "content",
         "regex": "a",
         "replace": "<replaced_a>"
        }
      ]
   "resourcesDir": "resources",
   "turndownOptions": {
      "headingStyle": "atx"
   },
   "dateFormat": "YYYY-MM-DD",
   "haveEnexLevelResources": true,
   "haveGlobalResources": false,
   "useUniqueUnknownFileNames": false,
   "useLevenshteinForLinks": false,
   "convertColorsToMDHighlight": false,
    "logseqSettings":{
        "journalNotes": false
    },
   "obsidianSettings": {
      "omitLinkDisplayName": false
    }

}

The following configurational properties are available: |

Property Name	Property value	Meaning
enexSources	multiple enex files, or a folder of the enex files(if you specify it via command line)	specifies the exported Evernote notebook(s) as an absolute path
templateFile	path of your custom template file	if its not specified, a default template will be used
outputDir	path to your output dir (absolute or relative)	this is the main output dir where the extracted markdown files and the external resources, images, pdf-s are going to be created
resourcesDir	_resources	subdir where attachments/external resources will be placed
isZettelkastenNeeded	true or false	puts Zettelkasten Id (based on time of creation) at the beginning of the file name
useZettelIdAsFilename	true or false	Note files are named by their creation date (those are interpreted as zettelIds)
plaintextNotesOnly	true or false	skips any notes with attachments (e.g. notes containing pictures)
useHashTags	true or false	whether to add the pound sign in front of tags
outputFormat	ObsidianMD or StandardMD	generates internal file links and highlights in Obsidian-style: highlights are going to be bounded by == instead of ` characters, file links are going to be as follows: ![[file-name]] instead of . Possible values: ObsidianMD to get Obsidian-style notes, StandardMD or skip it completely, if you prefer Standard Markdown format.
haveEnexLevelResources	true or false	stores note resources on global _resources folder per enex export if enabled
monospaceIsCodeBlock	true or false	if it's true then all deepest elements with monospace font style is recognized as Codeblocks
dateFormat	string	ISO 8601 specification of the expected date format (e.g. YYYY-MM-DD)
keepMDCharactersOfENNotes	true or false	set it true, if you used Markdown format in your EN notes
nestedTags	it's a complex property contains the following subitems: "separatorInEN", "replaceSeparatorWith" and "replaceSpaceWith"	separatorInEN stores the tag separator used in Evernote, replaceSeparatorWith is the string to what separatorInEN should be replaced to, and replaceSpaceWith is the string to what the space character should be replaced to in the tags. For example using the default settings a tag tag1_sub tag of tag1 is going to be converted to tag1/sub-tag-of-tag1
keepImageSize	boolean	preserve the images' size or not
imageSizeFormat	ObsidianMD or StandardMD	specifies the format if keepImageSize is set to True
urlEncodeFileNamesAndLinks	true or false	URL-encodes linked file names and internal EN links . e.g "linked file.jpg" will be converted to "linked%20file.jpg"
sanitizeResourceNameSpaces	true or false	Replace spaces in resource names with the replacementChar. e.g "linked file.jpg" will be converted to "linked_file.jpg"
replacementChar	string	the replacement character. e.g "linked*file.jpg" will be converted to "linked_file.jpg". It defaults to "_"
replacementCharacterMap	JSON Object	it contains character key-value pairs, the keys will be replaced by the proper values in the filename
globalReplacementSettings	JSON Array	it contains search and replace pairs, the keys will be replaced by the proper values according to the given type (title or content). Please note: this property has to be in valid JSON Array format, and each item has to have type ('title', 'content' or 'tag'), regex (what you want to replace as a valid regular expression) and replace (what you want to push instead of the matched text) properties)
keepOriginalAmountOfNewlines	true or false	keep the original amount of newlines, default is false, when the multiple newlines are collapsed to one.
generateNakedUrls	true or false	if it's true, Yarle generates 'naked' external Urls without any extra characters. If its false, external Urls are wrapped by '<' and '>' characters
addExtensionToInternalLinks	true or false	adds '.md' extensions at the end of internal file links, to make them recognizable by DevonThink and other tools
turndownOptions	{...}	additional configuration options for turndown, e.g., { "bulletListMarker": "-" } (only in Yarle config file, not desktop app)
obsidianSettings	{...}	settings for Obsidian output. Currently, omitLinkDisplayName is supported. If set to true links will be of the form [[foo]]. Conversely they will be of the form `[[foo
logseqSettings	{...}	settings for Logseq output, currently journalNotes property is supported, if it is set to true, then the notes will be converted to be recognizable by Logseq as Journal notes, the notes will be named by their creation date and they will be collected under journal folder. If it is false, then they will be converted to be Pages (e.g. simple notes, collected in pages folder).
taskOutputFormat	ObsidianMD or StandardMD	Output format of Evernote v10+ tasks. ObsidianMD will connvert tasks to match with Obsidian Tasks plugin's requirements. StandardMD will create plain tasks, loosing many features like reminders or due dates.
obsidianTaskTag	string	a tag to put to a task converted from Evernote v10+ tasks. Optional by Obsidian Tasks plugin, pls check the details there.
trimStartingTabs	true or false	Removes the tab characters from the beginning of every line in a note. It is meaningful, because Obsidian recognizes tabs as codeblocks by default and blocks recognition of links (for instance) in the line
convertPlainHtmlNewlines	true or false	Yarle converts newline html tags to newlines, even if they are within Evernote paragraphs.
encryptionPasswords	string	list of passwords used in any notes, separated by commas
useUniqueUnknownFileNames	boolean	generates a couple of random characters at the end of the resource file names if the exact name cannot be recognised. For instance: unknown_filename-d2fd86c3.pdf
useLevenshteinForLinks	boolean	it applies the link to the note with the filename that has the closest Levenshtein distance to the text of the link
keepEvernoteLinkIfNoNoteFound	boolean	it keeps the link to the evernote note if no such note found among the converted files
convertColorsToMDHighlight	boolean	it converts colored highlights and custom font spans to standard markdown highlights
removeUnicodeCharsFromTags	boolean	it removes the unicode characters (like éáűőú) from tags

Metadata settings can be set via the template.

Note links over notebooks? No problem, here is what to do:

In order to minimize the wrong conversion of links due to duplicated note names, you need to do the followings:

1. Before export your notes: select all withing a notebook
2. Create a Table of Contents note
3. Export the notebook together with the TOC file
4. Start yarle and convert your notes

Converting notes to Tana

Yarle converts your notes to Tana Internal Format. To achieve this, the only thing you need to do differently than the default usage is to the output format as Tana Internal Format. The conversion will produce one file only called notes-in-TIF.json. It will contain all of your notes in Tana Internal Format, then you can import this file to Tana.

Limitations

Currently Yarle (or any other converter), cannot convert images into Tana Internal Format. Moreover Yarle converts Evernote tables to Tana as plain text.

Once Tana Internal Format supports these features, we are glad to fill these gaps in the conversion.

Converting notes to Heptabase

Just select Heptabase as output format, and then a zip is going to be created as a result of the conversion that contains all of your notes with images, everything together, prepared to be uploaded to Heptabase.